SPAIN: Finally a Real Campaign

It was a spectacle the likes of which most Spaniards had never seen.
Only hours after the official opening of the country's first election campaign
in 41 years, half a million political posters bloomed along the narrow streets
and broad thoroughfares of Madrid. For the first time ever, politicians of all
stripes, including the long-outlawed Communists, made campaign appearances
last week over the air waves of the state-run television network, which had been
created as an instrument of the Franco dictatorship. Across the
country, nearly 6,000 candidates, vying for 557 parliamentary seats in
the June 15...